No credible doctor would ever tell a “cutter” that her destructive habit of inflicting physical harm on herself is a normal part or her identity. Nor would a trustworthy physician ever tell a bulimic who purposely throws up her food in order to stay thin that such a practice is somehow beneficial to her health. Why, then, are so many supposed doctors these days unconditionally affirming gender dysphoria as a normal and healthy part of human identity?

Muckraker Abigail Shrier is one of a growing number of experts asking this question as American society dives headlong into a brave new world of gender identity madness. In a recent op-ed she wrote for The Wall Street Journal, Shrier makes the case that rapid onset gender dysphoria, or ROGD, is just another “social contagion” like bulimia and cutting, but that somehow it has become culturally accepted due to social engineering.

While social contagions are generally recognized as disorders that deserve proper treatment, ROGD has somehow gotten “full support from the medical community,” she writes. And the long-term consequences of this perverse form of political correctness, she contends, are nothing short of disastrous.

“The standard for dealing with teens who assert they are transgender is ‘affirmative care’ – immediately granting the patient’s stated identity,” Shrier explains, noting that ROGD has become an anomaly within the classification of social contagions due to the fact that transgenderism in general has become “a fashionable cause.”

“Planned Parenthood furnishes testosterone to young women on an ‘informed consent’ basis, without requiring any psychological evaluation,” she adds. “Student health plans at 86 colleges – including those of nearly every Ivy League school – cover not only cross-sex hormones but surgery as well.”

Parents who question their children’s gender dysphoria are chastised by PC thought police

Even more disturbing is how parental influence on the matter is disregarded or even demonized by the PC thought police, who’ve decided that underage children should be allowed to take hormone drugs and undergo irreversible surgeries without their parents’ permission – even when there’s strong evidence to suggest that a child wishing to undergo a “sex change” is mentally ill.

“Nearly every force in society is aligned against these parents,” Shrier says. “Churches scramble to rewrite their liturgies for greater ‘inclusiveness.’ Therapists and psychiatrists undermine parental authority with immediate affirmation of teens’ self-diagnoses. Campus counselors happily refer students to clinics that dispense hormones on the first visit.”

A couple from Ohio recently lost custody of their daughter for trying to counsel the girl out of trying to become a “boy.” Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon from Hamilton County reportedly allowed the girl to be taken into custody by her grandparents, who supported allowing their granddaughter to choose on her own to undergo permanent sex-change surgery without her parents’ consent.

Despite the fact that transgenderism has been shown to be a mental illness, there’s no room for debate on the matter in today’s PC culture. And the consequences are now undeniably evident, as the number of people who are opting for transgender surgery has soared by as much as 2,800 percent in less than a decade, according to reports.

“Western societies have witnessed a phenomenal rise in the number of persons, especially young people, seeking treatment for gender identity issues, paralleling the attention given to gender theory in communications, medicine, and the entertainment media,” writes Dr. Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D., for Breitbart.

“In the United States, for instance, the percentage of adults who currently identify as transgender is double what is was just seven years ago.”